Book: Princess Of Thorns by Stacey Jay

Expected Publication is December 9, 2014 by Delacorte Press|Expected Number Of Pages: 278 pages

Where I Got It: I received a digital advanced copy from netgalley.com, which hasn’t influenced my review in any way.  Promise!

Series: None

Genre: YA Fantasy/Fairy Tale Re-telling

You can find Princess Of Thorns on goodreads & Stacey Jay on twitter, facebook and her website

Goodreads Summary:

Game of Thrones meets the Grimm’s fairy tales in this twisted, fast-paced romantic fantasy-adventure about Sleeping Beauty’s daughter, a warrior princess who must fight to reclaim her throne.

Though she looks like a mere mortal, Princess Aurora is a fairy blessed with enhanced strength, bravery, and mercy yet cursed to destroy the free will of any male who kisses her. Disguised as a boy, she enlists the help of the handsome but also cursed Prince Niklaas to fight legions of evil and free her brother from the ogre queen who stole Aurora’s throne ten years ago.

Will Aurora triumph over evil and reach her brother before it’s too late? Can Aurora and Niklaas break the curses that will otherwise forever keep them from finding their one true love?

What I Thought:

I was really intrigued with Princess Of Thorns, mostly because I know there are a few Sleeping Beauty re-tellings out there (even though I have yet to read any of them).  While I liked Princess Of Thorns, it wasn’t as much as I expected.

I liked the idea of Aurora being blessed with fairy gifts, and how she can’t kiss any male because of a curse.  I also liked that she was trying to take back the throne from an Ogre Queen, because of this prophecy that will usher in a new age that involves ogres taking over.

I thought we got the right amount of information we needed about this world.  Everything made sense, but there were times when I wanted to know more!  With stand-alone fantasy and re-tellings, I always worry that one book won’t be enough to know what we need to know about the world, but I found that Princess Of Thorns was fast-paced (and also well-paced), and had the right amount of detail.

I still wanted to know more about Aurora’s childhood, and what happens after the end of the book, and the different groups of people.  I wanted to know more about how this world came to be and some of the very much in the background characters. Especially the real antagonist.

I will say that I really liked seeing Aurora and Niklaas change over the course of the book, and how they both had some things to overcome, and I wish we had more time to see it happen.

I know the basics of the Disney version (and not surprisingly, there is no connection between the two) but since I’m not familiar with the original tale of Sleeping Beauty, I am not completely sure how much it follows the actual tale.

Let’s Rate It:

Overall, I really liked Princess Of Thorns, because I thought Jay did a great job with telling the story in a really simple way. I do wish that this book was the first book in a series,  because I wanted to know more about this world.  Princess Of Thorns gets 4 stars.